I wouldn’t be for disrespecting it now at all, apathy would be my attitude. I always thought Cockerill was hard done by that time. How many times have New Zealanders gone up to people during the Haka anc got in their faces? Load of nonsense, the way they’re so precious about it too does my head in. I remember talking to a few New Zealanders the last time I was at an All Blacks game and they were bleating (no pun intended) about how they’d never wear a replica All Black jersey because it is a sacred item… Pass me the bucket, as Fizy says try beating France once in a while ye sheep shaggers*…
[quote=“dancarter”]Fair enough, each to their own. I would have thought that a show of unity was common place in a lot of sports though, like the celtic huddle, loads of GAA teams stand together now for the anthem instead of going to there position.
A lot of teams that have tried to ignore it have just looked fucking stupid. I think in the 70s llanelli decided to go down and warm up in the in goal are while it was happening, the AB followed them down and did it in the in goal area. Campo fucked off out to the wing and started juggling the ball by himself, I think the english Rugby League team turned thei back on it the other day as well.
Personally Id respect it, but I am a sucker for tradition.[/quote]
I think it gives them a psycholigval edge as they are doing this war chant thingy with everyone looking at them. Its all about doing thigs on their terms, whatever the opposition do its reactive.
One thing that I would do if I was in the irfu is change the order of proceedings. Tell them they can do the Haka either before the anthems (when the irish could choose to be delayed in the dressingroom) or during their warm-up. Why should the opposition be involved in this charade. If its about an expression of Maori culture, it shouldn’t matter where or what the opposition are doing.
My hypothesis is that this is all about unsettling the opposition psychologically which is why they want to do it right at the start of the game.
France facing the haka in 2007 had the right idea.
I take your point about linking arms, but that generally coincides with lads hanging back 10 yards and generally looking a bit timid. The French lads had the right idea. What they needed was to get in the heads of the NZ team. This is very much possible in certain high stakes situations, particularly in the World Cup.
[media=youtube]RzMTr3pNo-E
I agree that Ireland would be best served with a policy of indifference bordering on boredom today. It’s not a high stakes situation so doing anything dramatic would be pointless.
When I was a young lad the haka to me was a pretty cool thing. At that stage I had a lot of love for rugby. That has eroded away particularly in the last few years. The amount of kicking in the last World Cup was painful to watch. My opinion of New Zealand as a nation and a sporting nation nose-dived spectacularly in the last few years as well. That is down almost entirely to the 3 months I spent living in Wellington during the Lions tour in 2005.
As an Irish guy, growing up you see the haka as something that is a quirky little tradition that has an element of fun to it. Living over there though you see how ridiculously serious they take the haka. The amount of coverage it is given on TV and in newspapers is very sad indeed.
As ye mentioned, there was the big controversy about the way Driscoll responded to it. But there was much more than that. Any time they played there would be speculation about whether they will use the “new” haka that they had been working on. Coverage on how they had been practicing the new haka in training. That just seems a bit weird to me. Like do they do their warm up, do a few drills, some tackling training, then practice the haka and have a practice match. Bizarre.
There was also something about how they no longer jump at the end of a haka because the basis of the Maori tradition is a connection with the land and by jumping you would be disrespecting that and that the throat slitting gesture at the end of the new haka was ill-advised in this PC world.
I like how it must be a Maori that leads it. That makes sense but everything else about it is so overdone. Especially on match days. As I said you have the speculation of what haka they are gonna use, then they do the haka, then my favourite part, the slo-mo instant replay of the haka with the commentator generally saying “wow, that was a really good haka” with the other guy replying “Too, right. Powerful stuff”.
Ridiculous.
That France victory in the World Cup over them made me very very happy.
If a fook got in my face and started shouting at me like those coonts I’d stick my fingers in his eyeballs. A ya ya boomba boo, get the the fook with yer jibberish.
There were microphones on the pitch to pick up the chant, real hairs on the back of the neck stuff when the Munster haka was going on and some great respect shown for the “real” one
